Fight the Future
by nathan-p
Summary: The experiment went horribly right. Itex had created a team of perfect killers. Had raised them to adulthood. Had avoided the mistakes they might have made, in some other world. AU crack oneshot. No pairings.


_For the first time... I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness._

* * *

"We fucked up, didn't we?" said Mueller as the last frame of the tape faded from the screen.

"Sounds like a pretty fair assessment to me," said his companion, looking furtively at the smoke detector before he lit a cigarette.

"So what do we do?"

Jeb Batchelder sighed and blew a perfect smoke ring. "We make sure not to fuck up over here."

* * *

"Careful!" Mueller hissed when the tech let Maximum fall. "Do you know how hard we've been working with her?"

"Doctor, we have to let her fall sometimes," the tech said as Maximum got to her feet with one pudgy hand on the edge of the table.

Mueller sighed and rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead, watching Maximum stumble around the room as the tech leaned negligently against the table. Inside, he couldn't believe that in another timeline, this little girl had come close to destroying the world.

He had to wonder, too – could they change that fate, really? They'd struck on a rare piece of luck by intercepting those 'transmissions' from another world, but he somehow doubted they could trust them so wholeheartedly.

Maximum giggled and ran for the door, wings opened slightly to help her balance. She stood in front of the door, fists clenched, clearly excited.

"Max, what are you doing?" said Mueller, turning to watch her.

The door hissed open and Jeb Batchelder stepped in.

Max squealed and waved her arms. "Daddy!"

Jeb scooped her up in his arms and kissed her forehead. "Hi, Max. You ready to go?"

"Yep." She waggled her wings. "Put me down."

Mueller looked on with amusement as Jeb set Max back on her feet. She might someday save the world, but for now she was a toddler. A surprisingly intelligent toddler, but a toddler nonetheless.

She wobbled slightly, then caught herself on the doorframe as she followed her father into the hall.

Jeb said something as the door began to shut, but Mueller couldn't hear what Max said. Pity. She had an extraordinary ability with words, and while the other two children her age were still being read picture books, Max insisted on trying to read on her own.

Disturbingly, she was making progress, and Mueller had taken the initiative to order in books of higher reading level for her. Better to be prepared too early than to have to scramble for books later.

"Riddle me this," said Mueller as the tech began to sweep building blocks into a neat pile and put them away in their box. "How did she know he was coming?"

"Maybe she heard him in the hall." He shrugged. "We know they have better-than-average hearing."

"True." There was a slim possibility she was exhibiting psi talents... very slim, however, considering that all they had really done with Maximum was ensure that they could create a stable avian-human hybrid.

Mueller sighed and stood up from the table, gathering his notes into a neater pile. Nicholas and James would be just finishing their playdate, which gave Mueller a chance to check in with each boy individually. James's vision was continuing to worsen, a worrying symptom which made Nicholas's shyness seem like nothing.

He waved the door open and thought: at least they were having an easier time of it than over in the other timeline. There wasn't much information on the formative years of _those_ children, but what there was implied that they'd been little hellions.

Mueller heard the thump of something colliding with the wall echoing down the hall from the room where playdates were held and amended himself: in the other timeline, they'd been even more hellish.

Here, they were just... what was the phrase? Going through a stage. Whatever the Americans called it.

_The terrible twos,_ he recalled as the door opened to reveal Nicholas, sporting a jaunty black eye, dueling for a toy truck with James.

It was an apt phrasing.

* * *

"I hate math," Max said glumly.

Mueller raised one eyebrow, watching as she worked through the problem set. His own daughter at the same age would have taken twice the time Max needed to work the same problems. "Why is that?" he asked.

She shrugged, tongue sticking out of her mouth as she erased a mistake and rewrote the correct calculations. "It's boring."

"Finish the sheet, please."

"And _then_ can I pick out a book?" She looked up at him anxiously. The hair had obviously come from Jeb, but no one had ever cared to figure out _where_ those green eyes could have come from. Freak mutation, likely as not.

"Of course. I brought a few with me that I thought you might like."

"Okay." She chewed her lip, then put down her final answer. "Done."

Mueller clicked the stop on his stopwatch. Under sixty seconds.

Max leaned across the table, trying to see the face. "How'd I do?"

"Fifty-eight seconds," Mueller said, then showed her the face.

She giggled. "Awesome. Now what did you bring me?"

Mueller reached for his briefcase. There had been an _argument_ over his bringing this book in; however, he'd managed to persuade the committee that the downsides of allowing Max to read recent literature weren't present in this particular novel. He handed the tattered paperback to her.

"Ender's Game?" She turned it over to read the back.

"I thought you might enjoy it."

"Sounds cool. Thank you."

Mueller smiled. "You're welcome, Max. Is there anything else today?"

"Uh... usually I'm not the one who makes those calls, but no," she muttered, flipping to the front of the book. She'd probably be done with it by dinnertime; they'd measured her reading speed as well in excess of average, and she still retained almost all of what she read.

There seemed to be nearly no practical limits on the abilities of any of the children, as a matter of fact – in either timeline, it seemed.

Mueller wondered, as he bid Max goodbye and left her to read, if they really could avoid the ugly end that Itex had met in that other world. So much seemed to be the same – was the difference that saved them really going to be how they treated the children?

* * *

"Tag, you're it!"

And yet again, Mueller found himself playing the role of guard to the children. They weren't considered flight risks, but the higher-ups wouldn't allow them outside without someone watching their every move. He'd argued against it – children needed privacy and the ability to play without adult monitoring – but until major changes came or hell froze over, this was as good as it would get.

Jim shrieked and folded his wings, dropping away from Max as she came at him, flapping desperately away from Nick, who was It this round. "Watch it, Max!"

"Sorry!"

Jim usually sat out on the games of tag or whatever new aerial game the children had invented, but lately he'd taken a tentative role in the action – the hope was that the new contacts had improved his vision enough to remove the need for surgery.

Nicholas was hovering, watching from above as Max zipped around attempting to find him. She might have the ability to fly, but she still rarely looked _up_ to find danger.

Max stopped her hyperactive motion and began hovering herself, crossing her arms. "Okay, Nick. Where are you?"

Nick dropped silently from his altitude – Mueller had to admire how well the owl-feather genes had worked out with him – and hovered close to her. "Right behind you."

She turned around, yelped, and began attempting to backpedal away from him. "No fair! No fair!"

Nick surged forward and 'tagged' her (as Jim watched with amusement). "You're it."

Mueller had to smile as he watched them darting around. By this time in the alternate timeline, the team in charge of them had resorted to caging them and keeping them sedated as much as possible – due to their resistance to the more common sedatives, that was an arduous task.

Here, they were... schoolchildren. The older trio were gifted nine-year-olds who behaved as nine-year-olds the world over; they disliked their lessons and preferred playtime to schoolwork. Gabriel and Monique were almost ready to join the trio in leaving the nursery, though Gabriel's digestive system was still somewhat delicate.

And the youngest, Angel, was only an infant – an almost disturbingly normal infant, though she showed a remarkable facility for recalling faces. With her care they'd taken a large hint from the other timeline, and taken measures to protect her from mental trauma as much as possible. She might not even possess psi ability in this world, but it wouldn't hurt to be cautious. The last thing they wanted was another super-powered six-year-old psychopath.

A cloud drifted over the sun as Mueller watched Jim slam broadside into Nicholas, nearly knocking him out of the air. They had done their best to keep the children biddable here; they would never know that their caregivers might not share their genetic backgrounds despite their looks, and likely never rebel against their comfortable upbringing.

But nonetheless, there was a driving purpose behind the coddling of the children; someday they might be weapons. And a weapon that would not obey its master was no longer a tool, but a danger to be destroyed.

He hoped, almost for his own sake as much as theirs, that these children would not follow their cousins from the other world into a career of world destruction.

* * *

"She passes everything," said Jeb Batchelder, showing a rare bleakness as he guiltily lit a cigarette. He had been 'trying to quit' as long as Mueller had known him.

"Everything?"

"We tried a Ganzfeld test today," he said gloomily. "Put a card with an image in another room. Asked her to tell us what the image was."

"Did she do it?"

"Of course." He laughed, smoking nervously. "She told us it was easy. She just had to find the man who put the card in the room and look in his head to find out what the image was."

"I can see why the higher-ups are scared of her," said Mueller.

Jeb shrugged. "Yes, well... she's six, even if she did do something impossible today. You know what she asked me after we finished the test?"

"What?"

"She asked if she could please have a chocolate-chip cookie for a snack today."

"So what did you tell her?"

"I told her that was the plan. And she said she already knew that, but that it was polite to say please."

"At least she knows her manners."

* * *

"_Hasta la vista,_ baby."

Max laughed and clapped her hands, then poked Nicholas in the ribs. "You're missing the best part!"

Mueller, feigning sleep in the corner (they were _still_ reluctant to ever let the children alone for too long), wondered why it was that the higher-ups wouldn't let the children have a movie marathon without an adult observer, but would allow them to watch the _Terminator_ movies. Of all things.

They seemed to be a universal favorite with the children, though, which was rather odd. Even little Angel seemed to enjoy the movies, though she spent a lot of time snuggled up to her older 'sisters' on the couch.

There was a quiet hiss, and Mueller quietly made his way to the door.

It was only Jeb, making his customary check-in.

"Everything all right?" He glanced in at the couch, where all six children were raptly watching Sarah Connor flee the T-1000.

"They've seen this movie a thousand times and they still laugh at all the jokes," Mueller replied, and slipped out into the hall, letting the door shut behind him. "What is it?"

Jeb rubbed the back of his head, tousling his greying hair. "HQ wants us to tell the kids."

"Tell them what? They know almost everything."

"No. About the other world."

Mueller raised his eyebrows. "Right now?"

"Before we put them into training for field work." Jeb fixed him with an almost-pleading look.

"We'll wait until they're older," Mueller concluded. "No need to ruin the movie for them."

* * *

Max shifted in her chair. (Somewhere, the other children – or Nicholas and James, at least – were also being shown the tapes. And they were also probably fidgeting. Nervous habits spread like wildfire in their 'family'.) "So... you guys raised us like real kids because of what happened over there?"

Mueller nodded. "You _are_ real kids, as far as we're concerned. But yes. That information radically changed how we chose to raise you."

"Huh. That's really nice of you guys." She leaned forward. "Did they really keep us in cages over there?"

"You have all the information we do." He shrugged. "But yes. Insofar as we can tell, by the time you were ten in that world, they had to keep you sedated in cages so that you wouldn't hurt yourselves or others. They had to use a wolf-hybrid security guard to contain you."

"Wow. Thanks for being so nice to us, Doc." She rubbed her arms. "I hate cages."

"That's true of most people, Max," he said, smiling gently. "So now that you know the reason for your existence and your bringing-up... will you agree to work with us?"

She examined her fingernails, then looked up and met his eyes. "Yeah. It seems like the least I can do. Like, saying thanks for keeping me out of a cage all these years."

"Thank you, Max," Mueller said, with a genuine feeling of relief.

"No problem, Doc."

* * *

"Do you think we really changed anything, in the end?" he asked, watching the blurry footage of Maximum in action, a beautiful killing machine.

"I hope so," Jeb answered, snapping his nicotine gum. It seemed to be working for him, but Mueller found it annoying as hell. "They don't seem to be attempting any world-ending stunts yet."

"Yet."

"Right."

* * *

_One man alone cannot fight the future.

* * *

_Notes:

The opening quote is from _Frankenstein_ by Mary Shelley; the ending quote, from _The X Files, _and from which I stole the title.

I found this one on my flash drive. I wanted to write a story about an Itex - or at least, a School - that was devoted to making sure the flock turned out malleable. Do I remember _why, _or where I got the idea? Naw. All I know is that I wrote it last fall, at a point when my word processor thought it was writing in German - and thus, all the quotation marks were fuxored. As the saying goes.

I'm inordinately fond of Mueller. He makes a wonderful AU Jeb.


End file.
